Donald Trump’s reason for wanting a “Space Force” is as ridiculous as you can guess

Many of us have just collectively shrugged off the announcement by Mike Pence of Donald Trump’s grand vision for a “Space Force”. That’s just how crazy the Trump Presidency has been thus far that this idea of his amounts to just another blip on the radar of Trump lunacy.

Vice President Mike Pence called Thursday for the establishment of a Space Force by 2020, while also announcing immediate steps the Department of Defense would take to reform how the military approaches space.

“The time has come to establish the Unites States Space Force,” Pence said in a speech to US military and civilian personnel at the Pentagon, citing threats from China and Russia. Our Administration will soon take action to implement these recommendations with the objective of establishing the United States Department of the Space Force by 2020,” Pence added.

In June, President Donald Trump said he was directing “the Pentagon to immediately begin the process necessary to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the armed forces,” during a speech at a meeting of the National Space Council.

Because of all the other nonstop Trump news we have been barraged with, it has gone somewhat unquestioned why Trump wants a “Space Force”. Well, Trump has actually told anyone who was listening (and I certainly don’t fault anyone for not listening at this point) the real reason on a couple of occasions. And, the real reason is about as crazy and pathetic as you can guess. I’d wager that most people would assume that it has to do with his ego. That would be a correct assumption. But, just how and why it has to do with his ego is what makes it crazy and pathetic. Okay, with that introduction, I present to you, in Trump’s own words, why he wants a “Space Force”:

“And I put a great man, a wonderful human being and a great leader, just a friend, Mike Pence, Vice President, in charge. And I had a meeting with Mike and a lot of the people running NASA. And I said, “Listen. You got rich guys. For whatever reason, they love rockets. We don’t have to put up so much money. Let them put up the money and build.” And you got all these guys sending rockets all over the place. We’ll get the credit. I said, “Lease them the land. Charge them a lot, but let’s do it that way.” That’s a lot better. We’re like a landlord. So, we’re also doing our thing, but we do. You have all these rich guys. I don’t know what it is. They love rockets. I said “this is great” because you can’t send rockets up like down the street, right? You can’t take the local plot, the local Walmart, the local store, and send the rocket. So, we have these incredible big sites that are meant exactly for this with the gantries, will all of this infrastructure. Much of it hasn’t been used in a long time. And we’re back in business. But I said to them and I think the business people, “let the rich guys pay for it. We got the site. We got the real estate. Let them put their rockets up.” You saw Elon the other day. He put a rocket. I never saw anything like it. Yes. I’ve been watching rockets go up my whole life. OK. After a while, it’s like — but what I thought was incredible was when the engines came back down. Did you see that? The engines, they came back down. Now, they’re only two. The third one is missing someplace, but that’s OK. No. But I thought that was incredible. But you have all these rich guys, they are worth billions of dollars, they want to spend money on rocketry. I think it’s great. And I told my people, “Let them do it because if they reach the moon with their money, we’re going to take all the credit, OK?” They’re going to forget about it. Nobody is going to remember their name, but they’re going to remember our names. So, let them do it. Let them do it.”

“I’ve directed the Pentagon to begin the process of creating a sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces, called the Space Force. The Space Force. Space Force. Because space is the new frontier. And I’m not just talking about going to up to the moon and going to Mars. And I want the rich guys — you know, we have rich guys. They love these rockets. I said, “Lease them the land. Charge them a lot. They’ll…” — they just want to send rockets. But I look at it, with Bezos, with Elon Musk, they all love rockets. I said, “That’s OK. Let’s do it.” Let them send a rocket up to Mars. Let’s be the first. I hope they go fast. Let’s help them. Let’s make it really good for them. And if they do it, we’re going to claim it on behalf of the United States, OK? We’ll give them no credit.”

Now, it can sometimes be difficult to decipher Trump speak, so I will translate: Donald Trump wants a “Space Force” so he can one up Jeff Bezos, who he absolutely hates, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk, who Trump also has feuded with, all of whom are legitimate billionaires (unlike Trump, unless he would like to show us all his tax returns) and are spending millions, maybe billions, of dollars on their private space exploration projects. Donald Trump wants to create a “Space Force” within the United States government so that if Bezos, Branson, and Musk, who have used the government’s infrastructure for the projects they are working on, are successful, Trump can steal the credit from them. That’s it. That’s the whole reason for the “Space Force”: to steal the credit for any successful space exploration projects from Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk.

Trump and Bezos—but mostly Trump—traded insults and criticism throughout the former’s ultimately successful presidential campaign. The Republican repeatedly accused Bezos’s company Amazon of shirking its tax obligations; the company’s financial arrangements, including having its headquarters in Luxembourg, have previously generated controversy. For his part, Bezos said that Trump was a threat to democracy and threatened to send him into space.

Remember 2004, pre-Twitter times, when Donald Trump was forced to secretly write his insults on paper and then mail them to his enemies? Virgin Group founder Richard Branson sure does, and he’s sharing a 13-year-old letter Trump sent scolding him for starting a reality show similar to The Apprentice.

Branson published the surly letter in his upcoming book, Finding My Virginity, according to The Independent.

The tirade includes Trump ravings such as: “You should try to get out of the airline business too…;” “I wonder out loud how you can be anywhere close to a billionaire…;” and “Do not use me to promote your rapidly sinking show…”

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of SpaceX, Tesla and a growing number of other startups, announced Thursday that he will cease advising President Donald Trump in the wake of his decision to leave the Paris Agreement on climate change.

As you can see, there is no love lost between Trump and the billionaire space explorers, so why would Trump want to get all chummy with them now, and help them out with their space explorations? He doesn’t. He told us why. He wants to steal their credit.

He has also told us of his disdain for the “elite” on a few occasions. Now, I’ll give you one guess who he actually views as elite. Yep, you guessed it: people who have more money than him. Money has been his measuring stick his entire life. So, people who have more money than him, like Bezos, Branson, and Musk, are people he is losing to. And it just burns him up inside.

“Really. And did you ever notice — I hate it. I meet these people. They call them the elite. These people. I look at them. I say, “That’s elite?” We got more money. We got more brains. We got better houses, apartments. We got nicer boats. We’re smarter than they are. And they say, “The elite.” We’re the elite.”

“You know, a little thing I was talking about today. You ever notice they always call the other side — and they do this on — “the elite.” The elite. Why are they elite? I have a much better apartment than they do. I’m smarter than they are. I’m richer than they are. I became President and they didn’t.”

And there you have it, that last sentence: “I became President and they didn’t.” Now he is going to use that accomplishment of his to get back at the elite billionaires he hates.

Really, though, if Trump wanted to do something to get back at them, maybe he could just raise their taxes. Instead, he cut their taxes. I mean, this article is in no way meant to defend these billionaires, especially Jeff Bezos, in any way, who use their excess billions to pay for rockets instead of, oh I don’t know, paying their employees better. But, what does Trump do? He tries to waste even more money, not even his own money, taxpayer money, so that he can get back at them by stealing their credit.

So, billions of taxpayer money is going to be spent, not on health care, not on education, but on a “Space Force”, so a fragile, insecure, narcissist can get his childish revenge on a couple billionaires. This is our present reality and it is ridiculous.

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